Neither cattle business nor cattle baron could forever hold them back and in the eighties Cheyenne county became thickly dotted with dwellings built by the homesteader, though a large per cent of them were so small as to have been dubbed "claim shacks." So far from cities and trading marts, so high were freight rates, and so few were lumber yards and scarce was money that the settler in the ingenuity so manifest in new countries, found a cheaper, and many will yet tell you a better substitute for building material in the prairie sod, right at hand. For this reason ninety per cent of the farm dwellings constructed by homesteaders and ranchmen were sod buildings. The economy of their construction not only enabled hundreds to dwell upon their homesteads who had not the means of making improvements of other material, but the unusual warmth of a house so constructed and the equally unusual low temperatures in the very hottest

days of summer made life upon the prairie more pleasant than in many of the homes of a better-to-do class in the more thickly settled sections of the east.

The advent of the homesteader constantly forced the cattle men further west until the big herds which had formerly fattened on the unparalleled pasturage of western Nebraska had crossed the line into Wyoming and the disappearance and decadence of the customs and habits of the ranch and the range was a souce of regret to nearly everyone but the farmer. For the cowboy, while feared by some, was loved by many and admired by all ; for there never was a truer friend, a braver boy to face the many perils common to his day and duty, nor a more faithful guardian of the interests intrusted to his care. Fair weather meant a holiday fur him but when the storms of winter raged in their greatest severity, he would disdain shelter and defy old Boreas, and though generally supplied with the best of saddle horses, would show by his greater endurance, man's superiority to the animal.